A Dryer, A Priest, and a Life-Altering Question

“If you had killed me in 2016, who would have visited you?” 

The question hung heavy in the room, silencing the group of convicted terrorists. For Father Marwan, leading a session of Sycamore Tree Project, this was no rhetorical exercise. It was a pointed challenge to the men who, through their radical ideology, had taken innocent lives eight years prior. Father Marwan has spent years ministering to those in prison in Lebanon, encountering the darkest corners of humanity, but this was his first-ever course held with convicted terrorists. 

It wasn’t easy for him to get to this access. Security is incredibly high in the unit where they are held, but he felt God calling him to reach these forgotten men. He began with small acts of kindness: delivering water filters, food baskets and medicine to the unit. Initially, everyone – even the prisoners – were confused – did Father Marwan not know who these men were? Did he not understand the atrocities they had committed in the name of their radical ideology? Of course he did. But he also knew God’s call to remember those in prison (Hebrews 13:3) and terrorists aren’t excluded from that mandate. 

Despite being able to make deliveries, Father Marwan still couldn’t interact directly or meaningfully with the prisoners. However, his opportunity soon came in the form of a broken clothes dryer. The guards questioned why he cared about fixing it. After all, some of the men were set to be executed and none of them would likely ever step foot outside of prison again. But Father Marwan insisted. It was during the repair process that he was finally able to converse with the incarcerated men and find out more about them. To his surprise, the leader of the terrorist organization to which the men belonged expressed interest in wanting to rehabilitate and make amends with the communities their crimes had affected. 

Father Marwan knew that Sycamore Tree Project fit the bill and quickly started coordinating with the prison officials to begin a course. Sycamore Tree Project is Prison Fellowship International’s restorative program that increases prisoner awareness of how crime harms victims, what is needed to make amends and how to be peacemakers in the future through eight weekly course sessions. 

The first session began with the story of Zacchaeus, a man who was also despised by his community. “I know that there is still good in you,” Father Marwan told the group, “but no one wants to see it. No one wants to talk to you.” He drew parallels between Jesus dining with Zacchaeus, despite people urging that the tax collector was not worth His time, and his own efforts to engage with the men. 

The second session saw the group participating more freely. In one discussion about the immorality of murder, the group initially disputed, justifying their actions as religiously motivated, how could they be immoral? Father Marwan took a different angle. “Do you believe that there are actions that please both God and other people?” “Of course,” the men agreed. They felt that getting their dryer fixed and Father Marwan’s visits were such actions. “If you had killed me in 2016, who would have visited you?” Silence enveloped the room as they contemplated the question that would become a turning point in their way of thinking. 

As the course progressed, there was a change in the men’s rhetoric and hearts. They now recognized the harm they caused and expressed a desire to make amends with those they harmed, even though they knew that they would not enter society again.  But the story does not stop there. Time and time again, small circles of change create a ripple effect of transformation that grows throughout prisons and into communities. Father Marwan is already experiencing the next ring of this ripple. 

Locked in solitary confinement are even more notorious Lebanese terrorists. Despite having little to no contact with others, they heard murmurs about the course happening in Unit B and have requested to attend Sycamore Tree Project themselves. Father Marwan is working to make it happen and already praying about the session where he will ask them the life-altering question, “If you had killed me, who would have visited you?”